Charlie
by LisaDouglas
Summary: Carson catches Mrs. Hughes giving food to Ethel, an AU.


*This is probably a one-shot and is a tiny bit experimental. Please let me know what you think ;)

Elsie froze, her hands against the door as it shut behind the former maid. She turned around slowly to face Carson who loomed over her inquisitively. She knew he was angered in an instant by the look on his face and she shrank back in fear momentarily.

"What…do you think you're doing?" The butler asked, arching his enormous left eyebrow just so.

Mrs. Hughes swallowed nervously not wanting to explain herself. She cleared her throat, about to speak when he sighed.

"It's not going to change things." She put her head down and just listened as he spoke. "I know that somehow, somehow you think that helping her is going to alter certain outcomes that…"

"I do not!" She cried sharply.

"Elspeth I think you do." He confessed. It was the thing he'd been trying not to say for months.

"Well, could you blame me?"

"No. I suppose not. Please don't feel guilty." He urged, keeping pace with her as he followed her back to her sitting room, noting she was drying her eyes.

"I hate it when you pity me!"

What she'd really wanted to say was 'aren't you the one who should feel guilty?'

"I'm not pitying you." He laughed.

She paused, glaring at him from over her shoulder, looking him up and down as if she were searching for something. He sighed sadly, hating it when she treated him this way, as if she were faulting him. So much of their time together had been this way since Ethel had entered into her predicament and Elsie had started to assist her. It was driving them apart and he was afraid it would ultimately ruin their relationship. Carson realized all too well though, that this was a trigger point for them, and that in some way part of their relationship was already shot to hell. Ethel had merely opened up old wounds, which he was discovering had never really healed. They were merely dried up, calloused. It hadn't taken much to peel back the scabbed over skin and allow fresh blood to seep from the wound, just as if it were new again.

"I'm sorry." He sighed, not knowing what else to say.

"What for?" She asked. She sat at her desk facing away from him.

"You know what for and it doesn't have a bloody thing to do with Ethel."

Elsie put her head down a single tear snaking down her cheek and falling, lost into the abyss of her enormous black skirt. From behind he could see her frame and even, it seemed, her whole spirit shrink down in defeat.

"No." She shook her head. "It doesn't have a thing to do with Ethel." She turned around to face him and his heart sunk at the sight of her tear stained cheeks.

"Let me hold you."

"No." She shrank back angrily, deciding to use work as an excuse. She reached over and grabbed piece of mail off the edge of the desk and began to open it.

"You can't do this. You cannot feel this way. I did right by you."

She paused, turning around and laughing. "You did right by me?"

"You're here now." He offered. "And what's more Mrs. Hughes, even if I wasn't always there I always loved you and you knew that."

"Not _always_ , not the for first few months."

"I did damn well everything that I could, you know that. I was no Major Bryant." He was growing impatient with her now, and felt the need to distinguish himself from the dead-beat officer.

Elsie said nothing in reply, and instead she began to weep. He shut her door and got on his knees, taking her hands in his own. She pulled away, trying to resist but he wouldn't have it and clutched her hands securely in his own, squeezing them tight and forcing her to look down at him.

"Don't think for one minute that my heart didn't break, that it doesn't still break everyday, that I didn't _die_ a little when he did."

"Die a little?" She laughed through her tears. "Imagine being crushed beyond repair, but forced to go on living. Wouldn't death be a lucky thing then? That way you don't have to go on feeling." She whispered. "Ethel should be so lucky."

"But you must try to remember. This isn't your…"

"My what, my business?" She snapped.

That's what Mr. Bryant had said when she'd tried to interfere on his end and Carson knew that had only crushed her further.

"Yes and that's why you help her now, and nothing's wrong with helping her but there has to be a limit to…"

"Think!" She said sharply, her eyes angry. "Of **how much** she goes through with him!" She stared back at him straight in the eyes for what, to him, seemed like an eternity, the sound of her voice still echoing violently in the air. "Things could be so much different, if just one person stepped up to help her and the poor wee lad."

He reached up to wipe hear tears away and she yanked her head back, making it clear she didn't wish to be touched.

"That kind of thing might save a lad's life, change his outcome."

"Some outcomes, as you know there's just no rhyme or reason to." He reminded. She gulped, blinking as she looked back into his now tear-stained eyes.

"It might soothe a mother's deeply crushed heart."

"Then what say you of a father's heart?" He asked. "Surely he has one, and surely it breaks."

"I watched one break once." She remarked, her tone softened and she reached out to wipe his tears. He didn't flinch, he didn't pull away he just smiled at her kindly.

"I know its another Charlie's eyes you'd rather be looking into right now." He admitted. Elsie's heart began to quicken when he said this and she stared back blankly, surprised he'd said it. "Another Charlie whose wounds you want to heal." He paused as she began to cry out, her moaning quickly turning to loud sobs but he continued even as she started to apart.

"It's another Charlie whose circumstances you'd like to change, whose brokenness you'd like to mend." She wailed loudly as he said this and didn't protest as he gathered her face in his hands, caressing it lovingly as he finally begun his work of wiping her tears away. If anything he'd tell you that was his job.

"We can't fix Ethel and we can't save the Charlie's of the world." She choked on her sob when he said this. "But I hope you're content." He continued as she finally allowed him to take her in his arms and hug her tight. "To soothe me and you do, for my heart aches, and longs to fix the all the broken pieces, just as yours does."


End file.
